JISC’s new guide to Second Life is written by lecturers for lecturers, to help others  to use virtual worlds for teaching.

The guide has been written by representatives from several projects from within the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK.  JISC's recent Users and Innovation programme gave project teams the opportunity to work in emergent technology spaces that at the time were the domain of very few in higher education. These included multi user virtual environments such as Second Life.

Through a structured community and careful brokering of connections both in the UK and internationally, a group of projects came together that looked at these then only potential learning spaces and tried to make sense of them for an already busy higher education market. Their results and outputs far exceeded those laid down in their project plans, and are a testament to not only the projects’ own hard work, but the help and input of a wide range of other U&I projects whose staff volunteered their time to user test and participate ‘in world’ with events and exercises.

Through the life of the Second Life projects information was gathered and analysed and, perhaps unsurprisingly, one area stood out as needing support more than any other - getting started. This then gave weight to the argument for a JISC Introductory guide to Second Life. And here it is: aimed at staff who are looking to connect through a virtual world to learning and research activities, this guide should be the first step in any proposed use of Second Life for learning and teaching, providing a step by step approach and a range of guidance in the key areas and issues.